Coming Back to Stay
by hopestar789
Summary: "The memory struggles to surface, little more than image, hazy and soft, like trying to chase a dream after you wake. But it's the feeling of it, something tucked deep, a morsel inside his chest, something he saved…Yes, that, that is real." Follows Peeta's struggle to return to himself once reminded of Katniss's only request. MJ and post-MJ. Canon. M for sexuality and mature themes
1. Chapter 1

"Katniss."

The dark edges of his nightmares transform, taking a hard, definite shape, her face, her eyes red and her mouth dripping foam. His entire body seems to hum with this chanting desire. All he knew was he had to reach out and kill.

 _Kill Katniss._

They want to kill Katniss.

Peeta slams awake, thrashing and calling out her name. She is there, a bow in her hand, pointed at him, this twisted look across her eyes. But it's not a look of malice. It's a look of pain.

"Katniss, get out of here!"

She hesitates, her bow lowers marginally. "Why? What's making that sound?"

Doesn't she see? She has to get away! This one thought, this one desperate impulse, is the strongest thing he has felt since waking up in Thirteen. "I don't know. Only that it has to kill you. Run! Get out! Go!"

The ensuing chase and fight with the lizard mutts is horrific, and Peeta can feel the games all around him again like he had with the can of soup. This time, though, it's the deaths and the screams that come back to him, that make his memories, shiny and non-shiny, screech across his mind. Still, he holds on. He keeps them moving. He holds onto that one impulse.

He has to protect her.

 _You're still trying to protect me? Real or not real?_

 _Real. Because that's what you and I do._

The screams of Finnick dying threaten to unravel his hold. Peeta forces them up the ladder, clamps down on his deteriorating grasp of reality long enough to see her whisper "Nightlock, nightlock, nightlock," and drop it into the hold. Then he retreats into the hard surface of the concrete wall and pulls against his cuffs, feeling the metal dig into his flesh, and he tries to anchor himself to that pain.

Kill. Kill Katniss. Kill the monster. Kill the mutt.

No, he's the monster. He won't be the mutt. He won't be like them.

Kill.

They have noticed now, but it's too late. He hangs onto this one thought while he still can. They have to keep going. They have to get Katniss away from him.

"Peeta?" It's her voice, and his brain echoes her hiss as she stood above the rubble of his bakery laughing, squealing as she crushed the skull of his father under her leather boot.

"Peeta?" And then she kneels down. Her face mutates into something with horns and black eyes. Something he has to kill.

"Leave me." His voice is choked. "I can't hang on."

"Yes! You can!"

He blinks, tries to shake his head to see her face, her real face, but he can't. He doesn't want to be this thing, this monster, the Capitol pawn that killed Mitchell. But he can't…he can't hold on…

"I'm losing it." He begs in his mind that she hears what he can't say, pleads that she runs. "I'll go mad. Like them." She can't see that. Not again. She has to get away.

All of a sudden, the mutt leans in, and there's a warmth against his lips.

She is kissing him.

A smell comes to him, the scent of salt water and wet sand. Laced over it, the smell of mint, lavender, and sweat. The same as he can smell now. It's her smell. Her taste. Something stirs within him. Something warm.

His body strains to reach out to her, to choke her, snap her neck, gouge out her eyes, cause her pain, any pain.

No. He clamps down on his muscles so hard that they shake and ache. No, he won't. He won't hurt her.

There's a hard grip now on his wrists. The pressure on his lips is gone, and he gasps for breath, his heart thundering against his chest. Her eyes pierce through his fog, gray and hard as granite, unyielding. "Don't let him take you from me."

That's right, _he_ did this, _he_ made him a mutt. Peeta tries to remember, but there is so little of Peeta left.

Kill her. That's what _he_ wants.

"No. I don't want to." What Peeta is or was, Peeta doesn't want that.

"Stay with me."

 _Stay with me_.

The memory struggles to surface, little more than image, hazy and soft, like trying to chase a dream after you wake. But it's the feeling of it, something tucked deep, a morsel inside his chest, something he saved…Yes, that, that is real.

His chest tightens, and he pants with the effort, but he drives back the mutt inside him. He lifts his eyes and manages an answer.

"Always."

* * *

 _It's the only thing she'd ever asked him for, so he'd kept it close inside his chest._

 _Katniss Everdeen didn't ask for favors. Those were just debts to pay back. Even when they were young, when she was starving, and she went house to house, he remembered the threadbare piece of cloth in her hand that she was trying to trade. She didn't beg. In all of the videos he watched and all of the memories he could glean out of his patchwork quilt of a mind, Katniss did. She acted. She could be selfish, and she could be cutting, and she could be calculating. She tried to protect all of them by asking for them to do things like run off into the woods looking for a district burned to ash. She didn't question him when he crawled in bed with her on the train, force him to leave. But she didn't ask for things, not for herself._

 _Except that once._

 _Katniss Everdeen had asked for him. She had asked for him to stay._

 _That feeling then had seized him, buried him, smothered him. Anything she asked, he would give her._

 _Same as now._

* * *

The basement is chilled, an almost wet cold hanging in the air. But there are dry animal pelts and a notable lack of lizard mutts, so that's alright. Besides, there's something about it almost comforting. Peeta wonders if it is because he's found refuge in cold, dank places before.

Gale's face is white, the blood that would color it now coating his shirt and his neck. They help him onto a pile of fur coats, and Katniss looks around for a moment, biting her lip. She seems to be considering. Then, she grits her teeth, kneels, and takes out a needle and thread from their first aid kit. She bends over Gale.

The violent monster lurches again in Peeta's chest, and he sits and faces the wall. He runs his hands under the tap that Katniss had started, trying to let the cold chill seep all the way into his bones. They shake, and he closes his eyes.

" _You know what's happening right now, don't you? You are here. You are here all alone, and Katniss is with him. He's probably slamming into her right now, burying himself deep in her, fucking her, while you are strapped to this table." The voice above him purrs from behind a sterile white mask. "But we know Katniss, don't we? She can't take that for long. So she'll flip him over and ride him and touch herself and let out a scream. So, in a way, perhaps you do at least sound the same while you lay here for me."_

 _Peeta swallows, the tip of the electric spoke that just jabbed into his side coming into view again. "Good." He coughs, and he tries a grin. "Good. That was the plan, after all. Die in the Games and let her go home." He twists his head and raises an eyebrow. "I'm just surprised at how long you're taking to make that first part a reality. I'm a little disappointed."_

 _The pain comes hot and sharp, and he does scream because his bones are on fire and his eyes roll back and god, why didn't he let Brutus just slam his head against the tree?_

 _He knows why. He had to try give her a shot. Give her a shot to get out of there._

 _So she could go be with Gale._

 _All of a sudden, the current cuts off. His body rattles with a few last spasms, and he can hear them moving as he tries to lick the spit from his lips. "Turn the clip on," he hears them say._

" _No!" His mind is jumbled, but he knows what's about to happen. There's a click and a slight woosh as the venom is injected into his arm. "No!" He tries to swing his arms, but they rattle against the metal cuffs._

 _The clip comes on anyway, the video of Gale kissing Katniss in the woods, but they must have distorted it somehow, made it different, because now he's backing her against a tree and they have no clothes on and he's inside of her and she's moaning, screaming, howling…_

With a sharp twist, Peeta shuts off the tap and turns around.

Katniss stares at the hole in Gale's neck and draws up the thread before knotting it. She dabs ointment on it, wrapping it with gauze. He swallows a couple of pills she hands him. "You can rest now. It's safe here." He nods and leans back against a pile of pelts.

Then she turns to Peeta.

He wants to pull away, but she sits in front of him. Her eyes take him in. For a moment she opens her mouth, and his mind inserts a growling hiss, the sound of a snake, but it's just in his head because then she kneels and washes his skin. She winces with each pat, her face reflecting the hurt there. He recalls the set, almost tortured expression she had worn when stitching Gale. Peeta considers an old image he had watched on the screen of their first Games, a Katniss with a green face drawing pus from his leg.

Katniss is squeamish.

It's a weird realization at a time like this, but Peeta latches onto it.

"You have to keep these clean. Otherwise, it could get infected –"

Suddenly, the cold of the basement is the damp chill of the cave. He's there. "I know what blood poisoning is, Katniss, even if my mom isn't a healer."

Her eyes dart up. There's something in them, a light. "You said that to me in the first Hunger Games. Real or not real?"

Peeta swallows. "Real." He studies her, remembering what came after. "And you risked your life getting the medicine that saved me?'

She shrugs, her face blank, as if getting the medicine had been like a trip to the apothecary's shop in District 12, not a fight to the death where a girl sat balanced on her chest and traced her lips with the point of a knife. Just the memory of it makes Peeta's heart pound and his blood course. He's angry. Angry she did that.

Angry she risked her life for him.

His head is swimming and pounding, but Katniss goes on. "You were the reason I was alive to do it."

Peeta blinks, trying to remember. "Was I?" He struggles through images, mud coating his face under the rocks, the fight with Cato, her dropping the nest of tracker jackers. Her dropping the tracker jackers and laughing as swarmed around his body because she was a mutt, she was trying to kill him.

No.

But between his memories of her with Gale and her in the cave and just her, the shiny images are getting harder to push back. "I'm so tired, Katniss."

"Go to sleep." Her voice is smooth, water falling over pebbles, not at all the screech of her his mind hums to him.

He's not safe.

"Hook me." He raises his cuffs. "Hook me to that chair."

Katniss looks at him. Her eyes dip and stir, but she does what he asks. Peeta lets himself drift into the black, the sound of her cries with Gale and her smooth, protective assurances competing in his mind.

* * *

 _She leans over his leg and gnaws on it, her teeth sharp and pointed, stripping his skin. She stares up at him and grins, her teeth red, before cramming berries and poison down his throat. He waves his arms, and suddenly she is racing for a small bag that says 12 before a knife slices open her forehead. She comes back and lays down beside him, but gets up when Gale comes into the cave. She pushes Gale into a back corner, where Peeta watches her shadow as she strips him and impales herself on him. But the cave, he's stuck in the cave, stuck where he has to watch._

" _You're stuck here, Peeta, so scream for me." The white mask bends closer._

 _No._

 _She's on the floor beside him on the cave, a dark pool of blood around her head._

 _No._

He jerks to, his chest heaving. His eyes crawl over the dark forms in the basement until they rest on her outline next to Cressida and Pollux. A hand is curled up next to her mouth. If possible, her face looks more haggard in sleep than in does while awake.

With a sigh, Peeta leans back and drifts off again.

* * *

Katniss turns to him. "What do you think, Peeta?"

Peeta jerks, taken aback. She had just confessed what they had all known; there was no mission to infiltrate the Capitol and kill Snow. Of course there wasn't. Gale and Cressida argue with her, and their words bounce back and forth like the tetherball outside the old school (or what he thought was the tetherball outside the old school – his memories feel like scattered puzzle pieces from six different puzzles).

But Peeta had been more fascinated by the way she tosses her hair back over her shoulder, the way she slashes the air in frustration, and the pure drip of self-hate in her voice. Her eyes swirl. They look like clouds swirling over the mountains before a hard rain.

He saw it, the same thing he saw when she watched him over the fire when he was assigned to the squad. How lost she looked. Her doubt. How she tried to carry it all. A mutt could never be this vulnerable. A mutt never fought to shoulder all of this.

He sees her spirit, the thing a mutt could never have.

"I think…" he began slowly, tasting his words. "You still have no idea. The effect you can have." Her eyes flicker, clouds parting and closing again. "None of the people we lost were idiots. They knew what they were doing. They followed you because they believed you really could kill Snow."

At the end of his speech, a change settles over her face. Her muscles tighten, and her jaw sets. She turns. "Where are we, Cressida?" They go to work on it, back to the mission.

He sees, too, her resolve.

They discuss ways to try and draw Snow out of the mansion. Katniss, of course, volunteers one plan.

"I bet he'd come out for me." Something in Peeta wants to sigh, but he really can't because she's serious and they might all take this seriously. "If I were captured. He'd want that as public as possible. He'd want my execution on his front steps." She pauses and looks around at them. A panic rises in him, the same that woke him to the sound of lizard mutts. In a weird way, he relishes it. It grounds him, and he knows what he has to do. What he must keep from happening. Katniss goes on, "Then Gale could shoot him from the audience."

"No." His answer is immediate. Peeta concentrates on a level volume. Katniss responds to reason, not raised voices (probably why she doesn't get along with Haymitch). "There are too many alternative endings to that plan. Snow might decide to keep you and torture information out of you. Or have you executed publicly without being present. Or kill you inside the mansion and display your body out front." This last statement makes Peeta swallow.

Katniss turns away from him. "Gale?"

Peeta fixes his gaze on Gale, and he's more afraid of this man than he ever has been before. He's Katniss's oldest friend, and he has almost as much fire as she does. He could get her killed.

After a moment, Gale shakes his head. "It seems like an extreme solution to jump to immediately. Maybe if all else fails. Let's keep thinking."

Peeta lets out a breath. For right now, Gale is his best ally. He's got fire, but he also cares about Katniss. And Gale assured him that he would shoot him in case Peeta turned mutt again. Together, maybe, maybe they could keep her safe.

 _Because that's what you and I do._

* * *

He can't sleep. He keeps nodding off to alternating visions of Katniss poisoning him with berries and leaving him to die/ running off to get the medicine that can save him. It's the same beginning, but her face changes form, sometimes laughing and hissing and sometimes just watching him with a sad, desperate look. Each time, it ends the same. After the fourth time he sees her bleeding out on the cave floor, he rests his back against the wall and keeps a vigil the shapes sleeping in the dark. He keeps a vigil over her.

" _No one knows what to do with you, girlie."_

Peeta blinks, and he turns to find Gale glancing at him. After a second, Gale gets up off the ground, finds an old can of soup they had eaten from, and turns the faucet on low. He lets it run and rinses the can before letting it fill with water. He brings it over to Peeta, and Peeta nods. He tilts back his head against his hands shackled again to the chair and swallows five good gulps down his throat. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was.

"Thanks for the water." Peeta nods.

"No problem." Gale sits back down on his furs and nods. "I wake up ten times a night anyway."

"To make sure Katniss is still here?" He takes another glance in her direction.

"Something like that." Gale follows his gaze, and, again, Peeta understands.

"That was funny, what Tigris said." Peeta allows a smile. "About no one knowing what to do with her."

"Well, _we_ never have." They laugh together, and Peeta feels something. He almost feels normal. Normal because something in him wants to hate Gale, but he can't. He just feels a jealous, quiet resignation.

That must have been what he was like before.

"She loves you, you know." Peeta glances back to him. "She as good as old me after they whipped you." Her face is still clear in his head, red on one side from sleeping on the kitchen table beside him. Not shiny at all.

"Don't believe it." Gale shook his head. "The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell…well, she never kissed me like that."

A white hope flares in him quickly before he has a chance to understand it. Hope? Hope of what? But it means, it does mean, that those videos of Gale and Katniss together _were_ distorted. But, he reminds himself, so was the purpose of that kiss. "It was just part of the show." Still, he can remember it. The heat pressing against their backs and the way she clung to him, and the small noise in the back of her throat as their tongues tasted each other.

"No, you won her over. Gave up everything for her. Maybe that's the only way to convince her you love her." They both sit back and consider that for a moment. Peeta plays the memory of the kiss again in his mind and then thinks of what he had given up.

"I should have volunteered to take your place in the first Games. Protected her then."

Peeta smiles and shakes his head. "You couldn't. She'd have never forgiven you." And he hits that truth that is starting to make itself clear to him. Katniss didn't care about protecting herself. If she had, they all wouldn't be here together in this dank basement. None of this would have ever happened. "You had to take care of her family. They matter more to her than her life." He realizes, in an instant, so do they. Both of them. The thought makes him both warm and sad.

"Well, it won't be an issue much longer. I think it's unlikely all three of us will be alive at the end of the war. And if we are, I guess it's Katniss's problem. Who to choose." Gale yawns and leans back. "We should get some sleep."

"Yeah." Even though he doubts that either of them will get a good night's sleep, he figures they should try. It will probably take both of them to protect Katniss during her brazen battle to take down the whole Capitol single-handedly. Peeta slides down and leans his head back against the chair that is his cage. "I wonder how she'll choose."

"Oh, that I do know." Gale turns over, and his words almost disappear into the fur. "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without."

It is so dark he can almost see shapes swim in the dank air. Peeta considers Katniss, thinks about who she would say judge as the one she could not live without. Her life has always been a matter of survival, ever since he remembered her out under that tree when he threw her the bread. Even in his tattered memories, she was reclusive and aloof at school, and she would vanish out into the woods every afternoon. But she would always wait for Prim, straighten the girl's jacket around her shoulders, and walk her all the way to their cabin in the Seam. And Gale. She would always come to trade at the baker's backdoor, a few squirrels for some bread, with Gale at her side.

Gale has always helped her survive. More to the point, he has always helped her family survive. Peeta sighs and feels that sad tug again in his chest. He figures he knows who her choice will be.

Of course he knows. She's just a mutt devised to play with him, torture him.

He shakes his head to clear the thought. Still, a new memory plays in his mind as he tries to get some sleep.

" _No one really needs me."_

" _I do. I need you."_

And, again, there is a brief white, hot flare of hope.

* * *

 _There is a shrill scream. Annie. He shivers in a ball on the floor, and the door cranks open. The white masks come closer, and then he's screaming and begging them to stop. He catches the glint of a knife, and it draws a hot, red line down the side beneath his ribs. And then he looks up and it's her. She's holding the knife with a small, dangerous smirk. She runs her fingers along the edge and studies the blood, his blood, and then slams it down into his leg, his leg that is somehow still there. Gale stands at her side._

 _And then she is gone, gone, gone, and he here's the crash of lightning and the boom of the cannon. "Katniss!" he screams. He's running through the jungle, the knife is in his hand. "Katniss!" He can't reach her._

" _Stay with me."_

 _He can't reach her._

* * *

He watches them as they disappear into the kitchen, but, when they return, their plan is fairly clear. If he goes out with them, he could endanger them again. That much he can accept as true. But Peeta's not about to sit still.

"I'll go out after you guys. Far enough away where I won't be a concern, but within sighting distance."

"To do what?" Cressida tilts her head.

Peeta gives a small smile and shakes his head. _To be useful. To not be the piece they made me to be_. "I'm not sure exactly. The one thing that I might still be useful at is causing a diversion. You saw what happened to that man who looked like me."

"What if you…lose control?" Katniss is staring at him, placing her words carefully.

"You mean…go mutt?" He turns his smile to her. "Well, if I feel that coming on, I'll try to get back here."

"And if Snow gets you again?" Gale looks at him now. "You don't even have a gun."

"I'll just have to take my chances. Like the rest of you." He meets his gaze, and then Gale does something he doesn't expect. He digs into his own breast pocket and brings out the nightlock tablet. He places it in Peeta's hand.

Somehow, in all of this, Gale really has become someone he can depend on.

"What about you?" Peeta worries that if he takes this, his fate will become Gale's too.

"Don't worry. Beetee showed me how to detonate my explosive arrows by hand. If that fails, I've got my knife. And I'll have Katniss." Gale flashes him a smile. "She won't give them the satisfaction of taking me alive."

Katniss, meanwhile, looks half sick. "Take it, Peeta." She closes his hand around the pill. "No one will be there to help you."

The touch, just a moment, triggers a howl within his mind. But it's easier to push back. There's no reason to attack someone wearing that face. She's already in pain.

* * *

The look she gives him after he says it…it's so full of wonder Peeta almost forgets what they're all about to go do.

Tigris had dressed them, done them over so well that they would be able to pass for any Capitol citizen on the street. He nodded at her. "Never underestimate the power of a brilliant stylist." Tigris bowed her head, and that's when he saw it.

Her gray eyes are so clear, so bright, it's like the sun itself is behind them. Suddenly, he thinks he's seen that look before.

 _She's sitting behind a table, Effie's hands over her mouth, Haymitch scowling._

" _You would have thought we planned it." He smiles at her._

" _Didn't you?" Portia rubs her eyes._

" _No," she says. "Neither of us even knew what we were going to do before we went in." And she looks at him with those eyes, and he knows it was worth it, whatever hell it might rain down upon them, to earn that kind of gaze._

And then it's time for goodbyes. Katniss unlocks his cuffs, and he stretches his fingers, flexes his wrists. He holds them, testing them. He doesn't feel the mutt in them right now.

"Listen." He glances up, and her face is hard. "Don't do anything foolish." She's worried.

"No. It's last-resort stuff. Completely." His answer isn't a lie. At some point, during these last two days, even after watching what he did to Mitchell, he is starting to think there's a chance. A slim one, but a chance all the same. A chance he could get himself back. And he doesn't want to die like he is.

Suddenly, she wraps her arms around his neck, clutching him tightly. He sucks in a breath, and he feels a scorching rage in his chest, wanting him to grip her and throttle her. But he breathes in that scent, lavender and mint, and that urge within him dies. He reaches his arms around her and pulls her close. He recalls all of those times he has had to watch himself hold her in both Games, comfort her, and he thinks he is beginning to understand. He doesn't want to let her go.

But she releases him, gives Tigris a kiss, and then she and Gale step out into the street, swept away by the streams of Capitol refugees, tailing Cressida and Pollux. Peeta takes a moment, straightens the coat that Tigris has wrapped him in, and follows after the agreed upon amount of time.

* * *

Snowflakes dig into his face, and he turns, looking for them. The day is overcast, and the light is soft and unsubstantial. Gunfire rattles buildings in the distance, and people shiver beneath their hats and scarves. But he spots her red cloak, and Peeta bends his face down and walks after them.

After some minutes, he comes to an intersection where Peacekeepers indicate which way the crowds should split. He thinks he sees Katniss turn, once, but she is too far ahead to tell for sure. Then, shots ring out throw the street, and people fall to the ground. Peeta drops and rolls behind a vehicle, poking his head out over the bumper to try and see. _Where is she?_

The gunfire is coming from the roof. Even in the hazy light, he can make out the forms of bodies lining the road. It must be the rebels, but helping them breakthrough is not his mission. It's his mission to keep going, to see if he can help them in any way. Help her.

He scoots forward, using the cover of the vehicle to duck into the frame of a door. He keeps pushing his way forward. After about fifty feet, he spots the crumpled form of a little girl in a yellow jacket. He pauses, and a sick bile burns at the back of his throat.

Rebels start pouring out into the street, taking position and shooting at the approaching force of Peacekeepers. Peeta barrels through the next intersection just to trip over bodies with skin melted off, pink and boiled. He picks up a gun from a dropped Peackeeper because gunfire ricochets off of buildings and lampposts, with everyone shooting and very few aiming. A dark shadow barrels toward him, and Peeta takes the shot. The shadow falls. He presses ahead.

He stops when the gray light is interrupted by a deep purple glow. A spatter of red grows within it, and Peeta ducks behind the corner of a house until he checks and the glow is gone. When he runs up, he sees more dead people, all of them covered by blood that has leaked from their eyes and ears and fingertips. But the ground shudders with the approach of more troops, and Peeta launches himself into the pile of the dead. He feels a few boots grind into his back, but then they are gone, and he raises up.

Peeta is about ten feet into the next block when he senses the crack beneath his feet. He glances down, and the whole street is tilting in like a trapdoor. Without hesitating, he turns back the way he's come and sprints for the intersection, jumping up where he can see the street now rises five feet above the pod. He rolls on his side and turns to see as people fall and slide into the depths below, their screams echoing back up to the asphalt above. There's a putrid stench, something that smells like rotting fruit and death.

He scrambles to his feet and runs to his right, taking the first left that he comes to. Here, he sees where scorch marks have burned into cement and pavement, but he grits his teeth and sprints down the road. One blow just misses his neck, singing a shoulder and shattering the window of a car on his right. He pants and takes another street on the left. The road is narrow, sharp spikes sticking out of the pavement, a few with soldiers and civilians speared on top. Peeta weaves through and comes back to the original street they had been following to the President's mansion.

He looks up and down. _Where is she?_ There is no red cloak. A cold fear bubbles in his stomach. His mind revisits the pods, all of the bodies. He chokes and gags on the smoke in the air. He stumbles forward.

No. He refuses to think that she's dead. Not when he's just started to figure her out.

At the next intersection, beyond the next block, he sees it. It's the gate to the President's mansion, and tiny fingers stretch into the air to grasp at falling parachutes in front of the fence. And then he sees nothing but red.

Peeta charges through the crossroad, the gunfire momentarily halted. People wearing white shirts and aprons swarm into the scene, and he sees her, her hood now black against the rush of white. She leans against a pole, her profile just visible, only half a block away. She starts as if she has found it, found whatever she was looking for. Peeta glances to where her gaze is fixed.

"Prim!" Her voice is clear, desperate. The same as it was at the Reaping that changed it all.

There's a turn, the swish of an apron, the twist of a blond braid.

Katniss steps forward. Peeta tries to follow.

Then she's flying, twisting, burning. She is a mutt, a mutt made of fire.

And so is he.


	2. Leftovers to Keep

Katniss.

He blinks his eyes.

There's pain. Pain and red over everything. He feels as if he is wearing Cinna's cape, but this time the fire is real. He cries out and grits his teeth when he moves an arm. The concrete grinds against the skin on his cheek, but there's something peaceful, something calming about it. He could just lay there. Close his eyes. Let this pass him by.

No. He has to go forward. He has to go forward to find her. Whether to kill her or save her, he's not sure.

He lifts his head, and his vision swarms as the pain rushes over him, electric white and scalding. Peacekeepers and rebel troops alike scamper over the charcoaled remains of cars and doors and bodies, seeking the injured, calling to each other. Peeta bites down and reaches one hand out. He crawls forward, an inch at a time, tears cutting paths down his cheeks. Every few moments, he stops and draws in a hard, piercing breath. He starts again.

"Hey, we've got another live one!"

Hands tucked under a gray uniform prod him onto his side, gently, but Peeta still screeches. As he pants, his eyes clear long enough to see the rebel insignia on his coat.

"Katniss," he hisses. "She's there."

"What? What did you say?" The soldier looks at him a bit closer, her eyes finally taking him in, wrenched away from the scene around them. "Did you say Katniss? Katniss Everdeen?"

Peeta nods. "She's here. Ahead. I have to get to her."

"My god." She jerks her head up, yells out to her right. "Jones, get Paylor on the line! Now! We've got Peeta Mellark!"

"What?"

"Peeta Mellark! We've got him! And he says Katniss Everdeen is up ahead!"

"Shit. Get that radio up now!"

He wants to tell them something, but he's forgotten what it is. He's being consumed, eaten alive by the fire that has become a part of him now.

"Peeta, Peeta, stay with me. I'm Officer Tanlin. We're getting some help. We're going to get you out of here."

"Katniss, she…." Peeta drops off, unsure.

She's a mutt. She could kill them all.

He has to protect her. Protect her from them all.

He's unsure what's true, but he knows that she lies at the end of all of this.

"Hold on there, Peeta, just hold on. Stay with me!"

 _Stay with me._

 _Always._

* * *

The next time he's awake, he's on a hospital bed, and a person in a clinical, white mask bends over to him.

"No! Get away from me! Goddamnit, no!"

"Peeta, Peeta Mellark, this is Dr. Herst." As she talks, she wheels his gurney down a hall made of smooth, white panels. "You're safe now, you're in the Capitol –"

No, they're hauling him back to the room, back to the room where they beat him and tortured him and took him away from himself, piece by piece.

Peeta wrenches himself forward, but he is caught by his own screech of pain. "Stay away from me. I won't let you do this to me! I won't let you turn me into some mutt! Stay away from me! I was just starting to figure it out!"

The white mask twists away. "You'd better get him down here."

"He's up there with Katniss Everdeen right now."

Katniss. _He's_ with Katniss. No.

"Bring him down here." Peeta spits out the words from between clenched teeth. "Get him away from her. Don't let him near her."

"What's that, Peeta?"

"I said don't touch her! Don't let him touch her! I'll kill you, I'll kill you all if he gets near her! I swear it!"

"Who, Peeta?"

Peeta looks at the doctor with wild eyes. "Tell him I'm down here. Tell him they can have me. Leave her alone."

"What the hell's going on down here?"

Haymitch.

He's hobbling, and his skin is yellow, sallow and dull compared to when Peeta saw him last as he shipped off to join the Star Squad. The stubble around his chin has lightened, and he looks around the room like every glance causes him pain. He takes in Peeta.

"Well, boy," he says simply. His hand grasps one of the rails of his gurney.

Suddenly, Peeta doesn't care that he hated this man for what he did, how he had sacrificed them both to a plan they were never told, made a part of a game they didn't understand. Because Haymitch had honored the one thing he had asked for. Maybe he would do it again.

He grasps Haymitch's hand. The movement brings on a fresh wave of torrent from his back, but he breaths out between his teeth. "Where is she?"

Haymitch narrows his eyes. "What's that?"

"You have to get to her!" Peeta's voice is little more than a hiss.

He sees Haymitch swallow. "Look, you're fine, you're not in any danger, the girl's upstairs –"

"No, where is she? Is _he_ with her?"

"Who, boy, who? You have to give me something to go with here."

"Snow."

"He's having some sort of panic attack related to the hijacking." The doctor jumps in. "We think it might be an episode, and we're needed someone familiar to help calm him down." As the doctor talks, she is wheeling his gurney down the hall. "What sedatives did you administer in 13?"

"How the hell should I know? I didn't administer any. They wouldn't let me near the medications." The last comment is a snarl.

"Haymitch!" Peeta grips him tighter. "Where is she?" His chest contracts. "Is she safe? Is she safe from _him?_ "

For a long moment, his old mentor just stares at him, something like shock in his eyes. "Well." He swallows, and his eyes are bright. "You're back." His eyes glance at him, the brightness dulling. "Well, part of you, at least."

"Haymitch, tell me –"

"She's upstairs, about to undergo the same treatment you are. They need to induce a comma – the burns, well, they're not great, what can I say? But the hospital is safe – you're both safe. Capitol forces officially surrendered about forty-five minutes ago. Snow's all locked up." Haymitch looks sorry and downright miserable. "You're both alive."

Alive. Safe. She's okay. Peeta lets his head back down and closes his eyes, though he knows whatever waits for him on the other side might be worse.

Before he slips away, he holds on to one last thought.

"You still owe me, Haymitch. You promised. Remember..."

" _You owe me. You picked her in the arena, you picked her life over mine, so now you owe me. Anything I want."_

 _Haymitch scowls and looks at the lip of the bottle. "And what is it that you want from me?"_

" _I go back in." Peeta scoots closer, leaning his arms out over his legs. "I go back in for the Quarter Quell, no matter what. And you save her. You keep her alive. Again."_

He thinks he hears Haymitch before he drifts away. "Always were a goddamn fool."

* * *

 _He is floating, bouncing, in a world of foam and sky. Birds swarm around him, but their beaks are sharp and they graze him with their talons curved into hooks._

 _Down below, in a sea of dark purple waves, she bobs and threatens to sink under._

 _One bird dives for her, a bird haloed by pink, tries to pull her up into the sky. Another bird buzzes around her head._

" _No!" he calls out, diving into the water himself. He hooks an arm around her. "We haven't gotten close to the shore yet! We have to keep swimming!"_

 _The bird whistles to him, lands on his shoulder. "Keep each other, keep each other, keep each other."_

 _But then she is pulling him under, pushing him under the surface. He gasps for breath, and his lungs choke on water. He thrashes and jerks, but her hold is too strong. Her face distorted by the water, she throws back her head and cackles._

 _The bird flies overhead, flitting back and forth. "Keep each other, keep each other, keep each other."_

* * *

Awareness is a slow thing, but it catches hold. And it burns. Just like fire.

At first, all he can feel is the sensation along his back. They lay him on his stomach, his face dipped in a cushion with its center cut out, but even the pressure of the sheet against his skin causes his teeth to grind and a pearl of sweat to drop from his forehead to the tip of his nose

A steady buzz of voices swarm around him, but none that his ears can track. He cracks his eyes open, the tears blinding him at the sight of the light bouncing off the white tiles. Dark shoes dart in and out of his vision.

"Peeta." His name floats to him. "We're going to apply some salve."

Then they lift the sheet, and he feels something cool and wet on his skin, something possibly that should be soothing, but he screams until there is a slight pinch in his arm, and blackness comes again.

* * *

 _He's back, he's back there. They have him strapped to a table, naked, his head latched with a leather buckle so that he cannot turn away. He watches Katniss on the screen as the fog overtakes them, but then her face changes to green while her lips and face are mutated with pustules as the moisture descends upon them. She kicks him, laughs, and leaves him to drift in the gray, suffocating vapors._

* * *

"Peeta, can you hear me? This is Dr. Herst."

He groans. They have pulled his eyelid up and shoved a light into its center. "Yeah," he tries to wave them away. "Yeah, I can hear you. And see you."

"He's responsive. Note it on the chart."

Peeta shakes his head. He feels like it is full of cotton, and his limbs flop through the air as if he hasn't used them in months. A cold fear settles in his stomach. "What's happening?" He tries to sit up, and he feels an uncomfortable stretch in his back, like he's wearing a shirt that is too small for him, except that shirt is his skin. "What day is it?"

"It's been about four weeks since your coma was induced. We needed to repair the skin on your back, make sure the skin grafts took hold."

"But," Peeta blinks. His vision swirls, and he puts his palms to his forehead. " _What's_ happening?"

The nurse beside him nods. "Snow is prisoner, awaiting execution. Coin is interim president. The war is over. It's done."

Done. Peeta looks up.

"Katniss?" His voice sounds like gravel. "Where's Katniss?"

"That depends on who's asking and when they're asking." Haymitch stands in the door, leaning against the frame, taking a swig from a flask. So the alcohol restriction they had in 13 hasn't been implemented here. Haymitch motions to the doctor and nurse, who both look at each other once and then clear out of the room. Haymitch wonders over to a chair with blue plastic covering the seat and sinks into it.

"So where's Katniss?" Peeta watches his mentor, notes how his red his eyes are and how his shoulders fall.

Haymitch waves the flask in the air. "Hopefully in her goddamn room. She came out of this about a week before you did, but she's got this damn nasty habit of squirreling away in small closets and pipes and rabbit holes. Give it another five minutes, and I'll probably have to go fetch her. I preferred her much better when she was lying in her bed sedated, nice and calm." He takes another swig. "It's like when we first got to 13. Only this…" Haymitch considers a spot on the floor past his boots. "This is worse."

Peeta struggles to piece together this information. The stuffed sensation in his head worsens, and he has to take three breaths to try to weave together the facts.

Katniss is alive. She has healed, faster than him. The Capitol is done, and Snow is in prison.

But Katniss is hiding in rabbit holes.

"Why?"

"We talked about this before, boy. You're going to have to be more specific."

"Why is she hiding?" Peeta looks up at him. "What is she hiding from?"

Haymitch meets his eyes, sucks in a deep breath, and lets it out. His chest sinks, and he looks older, much older. "Look, she's alive, okay, so let's just let that be for now – "

"Haymitch. What's going on? What's she hiding from?"

"You were with her. You were close. You tell me." Haymitch studies him with a fierce intensity.

"What?" He is taken aback by the shift. "What do you mean?"

"Before the explosion." Haymitch leans forward over the chair, shifting the flask in his hands between his knees. "What did you see?"

Peeta thinks. Explosion, yes, of course it was an explosion. He closes his eyes. "It was the president's mansion, right outside, by his gate. It was snowing, and the hands, there were all of these hands reaching up into the air. Because there were parachutes." Peeta swallows. "Parachutes mean food or medicine or help, but these parachutes…everything was red. The explosion shot down the street. It was all red." Peeta concentrates his gaze on his mentor again, a heavy, hot dread pooling in his stomach. "Why?"

"Where was Katniss? In all of this?" Haymitch's voice is little more than a whisper.

"She was ahead. She and Gale went ahead, and I tailed them in case they needed a distraction. A pod separated us momentarily, but I found the street again. She was leaning against a pole. I couldn't see Gale. Then, right before the second blast, she looked up. She must have thought she saw someone that looked like Prim because she called out Prim's name. Rebel healers had just arrived on the scene, and they were tending to the children. And that's when we were swallowed up in the second round." Peeta plies again. "Why?"

Haymitch just watches him, waiting for it to sink into him. It's always bad when Haymitch won't admit a fact outright. It's not like he's afraid of the unpleasant. But the devastating, only the devastating, does he leave unspoken.

Peeta can count his heartbeats perfectly against his ribs. Snow is going to be killed. Still, Katniss is hiding. If she can hide, she can move. She can move her arms and legs and tuck herself into small places. She is alive and breathing, but hiding from some greater pain. And then he thinks about the fact that they were Rebel healers and how he saw a blond braid, one that turned immediately at the sound of Katniss's call.

He feels all of the blood fall from his face. "No."

Haymitch hangs his head. "Wasn't just…Katniss was right. It was her. I…I was with her when she volunteered to go." His eyes are dark. "We'd been watching whatever clips we could steal from the Capitol, she, me, and their mom, watching as the Capitol tore itself apart to look for you guys. And she wanted to go help in any way she could."

Peeta shakes his head. No. Not after everything. The rush of blood produces the sensation of floating again, and there's nothing to ground him. "She…she wasn't fourteen." His mouth is dry. This has to be a mistake. "They told me in 13 that you can't volunteer unless you're fourteen years old."

At this, Haymitch stares at him, and Peeta is reminded of one brief stare he'd given him before while preparing for the Quarter Quell, when he told Katniss…told her something before he left that night. Something about the enemy. "The authorization came from above."

Peeta looks forward, and his ribs expand in an effort to catch his breath, which is hard and jagged against his throat. All of what they had lived through, all of what they had done, and this? This was too much. This was wrong. He felt the need to go back, revisit the pain and the burn, go back to the moment before. Perhaps it could be undone. They could all be undone.

There's a sudden pressure, a squeeze on his shoulder. Haymitch glances down at him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I…" He fixes his eyes on the wall, a darkness uncharacteristic to him gripping his features. "I guess it never ends."

Peeta looks up into his face. "I need to see her."

Haymitch sighs and then shakes his head. "I don't…I don't think that's a good call. Not yet." Before Peeta can get his second try in, Haymitch raises a hand. "Soon, boy, soon. Just…just give it a little time. And work on yourself before you go off trying to help her, okay? You won't do her any good, not right now."

"I'm fine, I'm not –"

"Yeah? What did you dream about? What were you thinking while you were floating around in that tank? When they brought you out and kept you doped up? All good, happy thoughts?" Haymitch bores his eyes into his, and Peeta flushes, gripping the starched sheets in his fists.

Haymitch clasps him on the shoulder once more. "Look, you just take care of yourself." He walks to the door, but before he leaves he pauses, turns. His fingers catch the doorframe. "Look, I remember the promise I made you. I haven't forgotten. But I made two promises that night." His mouth lifts at the corner, but there is nothing but pain in his expression. "If I work on the one I made to you, you gotta help me out with her request. Take care of yourself. Worry about yourself this once. Can you do that for me?"

Peeta blinks, his mouth dry and his tongue flat against the roof of his mouth. He hadn't remembered... he hadn't gotten that one thought straightened out yet. She made Haymitch promise to save him. He couldn't figure that out.

" _I don't know what kind of deal you think you've made with Haymitch, but you should know he made me promises as well. So I think we can assume he was lying to one of us."_

 _Her face turns, her eyes cloudy. "Why are you saying this now?"_

" _Because I don't want you forgetting how different our circumstances are."_

As Haymitch exits, Peeta leans his head back on the pillow, wincing at the contact with his new-grown skin. He realizes that their assumption had been wrong. Haymitch had stacked the deck and had stuffed an ace up his sleeve at the same time. All the while with a bottle in hand.

This time, though, their circumstances are still different, but they've been flipped. Katniss has nothing to return to. Before the darkness settles down around him again and he is swallowed by images of her settling over his body to throttle him, he wonders if there will be something waiting for him if he survives.

" _It's different for you. I'm not saying it wouldn't be hard. But there are other people who'd make your life worth living."_

Everything. He would have to offer everything. Everything if she were to have something.

* * *

 _He throws his knapsack on the back. He still rubs his wrists out of habit, unused to the sensation of air where the cuffs had rested before. He folds a gray shirt and tosses it in._

 _There's a soft knock against the plastic door. He turns, and Prim stands there, dressed in the medic uniform they gave students here. She glances at him, her eyes kind but hard. "Hi. Is it okay if I come in?"_

" _Of course." Peeta smiles, folding another shirt, and turns back to his bag. He can't hide the bitter note that leaches into his voice. She was allowed to come and go as she pleased. They all were, as he was listed as a general nutcase. There was nothing left to himself._

 _She walks over and sits on the end of his bed, watching him as he works, her hands folded on her lap. There's a heavy tilt to her shoulders, and that coupled with the uniform and just how tall she had gotten – she was about as tall as her sister – made her look older all of a sudden. Peeta sighs. No matter what she's related to, this girl isn't at fault. She had been coming to work with him, coming to speak to him, always kind. It was impossible to hate Prim._

" _Look," he faces her. "You don't have to worry, okay? I should be the one concerned. She's got everybody all wrapped around her little finger. If I so much as take a step towards her, I bet the whole squad is going to blow me sky high."_

 _She glances at him sharply, smiles, and shakes her head. "That's not why I came here." Her face falls again._

" _Then what can I do for you? Need something delivered?"_

" _I talked to Plutarch. I looked at some of the first Propos they have already sent back, and I asked him about it. There are traps designed to explode, some that throw out poison darts, things like that. Plutarch got very excited about them and explained how they worked because, of course, as a game maker, he helped design some of them."_

 _Peeta pauses, his mouth suddenly dry. "What?"_

 _She stares up into his face, her blue eyes clear and hard, two transparent stones. "It's an arena. That's what she's in. What you are going to. They turned the Capitol into an arena."_

 _His pulse thrums under his skin, and he sets his teeth and turns back to the bag. He reaches out to grab a pair of pants, but he sees the tremble in his fingers, and he latches onto the thick cloth of the knapsack._

 _He's going back into the arena._

" _I just…" At this, she has to turn away. Her breath catches, and her hand reaches back to tuck in her shirt. She faces him again. "I just wanted to say that I am sorry. I am sorry, but I'm glad. I'm glad you two will be together in this."_

" _Glad?" Peeta feels his chest tighten around something jagged._

 _Prim nods and smiles. "I know you hate her right now. But, if you think about it, hate and love are really the same thing. You lose yourself in feeling something for someone else." He's about to interrupt, but she holds up a hand. "And I know, I know she loves you. She does. And the only reason I still have her is because of you."_

 _Conflicting emotions bounce and ricochet in his mind. He hates Katniss Everdeen. He doesn't love her anymore. That part of him is gone. But he couldn't explain, he didn't understand, at her last words, why his heart started racing._

 _Prim stands and places her smaller hand on top of his fist, still balled in the cloth of his bag. "Keep each other. Keep each other safe. Keep each other alive like you did before. And come back, both of you."_

 _As she walks out of the room, Peeta wonders. He wonders if they can come back together. Keep each other._

* * *

In his dream that night, after talking with Haymitch, Katniss leans down, her fangs sharp and rounded, and she devours him whole. He wakes up, grasping his sides, tearing his fragile skin, trembling.


End file.
